need me to finish up cooking? You’ve been distracted since I got here. You’re lucky you didn’t catch your sleeve on fire lighting the burner.”
“I’ve got it under control now.” Possibly. “Besides, you shouldn’t have to help cook. You’re the guest.”
“Big sisters don’t count as guests. What’s on your mind, anyway? Thinking about one of your stories?”
“No.” Until Hadley had sold a couple of short stories to a mystery magazine last year, it had been a well-kept secret that the town librarian also dreamed of being an author. She was still hesitant about discussing it, but her sister had been super supportive. Leanne was the one who’d recently encouraged her to apply for a unique writer-in-residence opportunity. “I was thinking about new friends. Or old friends, I guess. If it was an old friend who wasn’t actually your friend.”
“Uh...” Leanne held up the chardonnay. “Did you finish one of these without me before I got here?”
“Ha—I barely had time to carry in the groceries, much less down a bottle of wine. I had a strange encounter at the supermarket.” She lowered her voice the way she used to when making up ghost stories to thrill her sister when they were kids. “On this stormy night, I ran in to a tall, dark man from my past.”
“For real? Last time I went to the grocery store, the most noteworthy thing that happened was I had to wait ten minutes for a price check.”
“Grayson Cox is back in town.” At Leanne’s blank look, she added, “He’s my age and was kind of a loner. You might not remember him.”
During Hadley’s junior year in high school, her older sister had run off with a man nearly a decade older. She’d declared him the love of her life, but it only lasted four months. By then, she’d had a waitressing job in Albuquerque and soon landed in an even worse relationship. Although she sounded miserable whenever Hadley talked to her on the phone, she’d been too proud to come home. It wasn’t until after their mother’s stroke that Leanne returned.
“Grayson is Violet Duncan’s nephew,” Hadley elaborated. “Bryant Cox’s son?”
“Oh. His dad was the one who crashed into that big oak tree on Spiegel.”
Fatal car accidents were rare in Cupid’s Bow; that one had made a lasting impression on everyone. As Hadley recalled, Grayson hated being defined by his dad’s death. She’d witnessed him get into more than one fight in the high-school cafeteria.
“So you and Grayson were friends?”
“Um, no. Not in the strictest sense. We didn’t hang out with the same crowd.” Hadley had always been with her softball teammates and their collective boyfriends, and Grayson had been...apart, scowling from the outskirts. Once, she’d tried to apologize to him for her boyfriend’s obnoxious idea of a joke, but Grayson had made it clear he wanted nothing to do with her. Or with any of them. “He could be abrasive, guarded. But people change, right?”
Leanne, reconciled with her once estranged family and working toward a college degree, should understand that better than anyone. “Is that why he’s back in Cupid’s Bow? Because he’s a changed man?”
“Personal emergency brought him back.” She took the glass of wine her sister offered. It seemed wrong to gossip about Grayson’s circumstances, especially given how uncomfortable he’d looked in the store, but with the way information spread, Leanne would hear all about him in the Smoky Pig anyway. “I don’t know the specifics, but he’s here for his aunt’s help. He’s raising two little boys after a friend died.”
“That’s terrible.” Leanne sipped her wine in silence. As Hadley was plating their food, she asked, “So was your encounter with him actually out of the usual, or were you just being dramatic?”
“I, uh...” Her reaction to him definitely hadn’t been typical. When he’d flashed those dimples at her, heat had coursed through her. She’d been so captivated by his smile that for a second, she’d forgotten about the surrounding mess or the noise of crying children. And when he’d rejected her offer of coffee, her disappointment had been irrationally powerful, too. She wanted to see him again. She wanted—
“You’re blushing! Let me guess, former grump Grayson Cox grew up to be good-looking.”
Extremely good-looking. “Are you implying I’m shallow?”
“I’m saying you already know most of the men in a fifty-mile radius, and none of them has put that look on your face lately. You should ask him to be your date for the reunion.”
“Oh, good grief. I just told you, he’s dealing with a lot right now. He has real priorities, and I doubt dancing in the Cupid’s Bow High gymnasium with some girl he barely remembers makes the list.” She carried the plates to the table. “Now, sit down and eat. No one should have to study on an empty stomach.”
After dinner, they spent an hour and a half on biology. “You’re so much smarter than you give yourself credit for,” Hadley said as Leanne was packing up her notes. “You need to have more faith in yourself.”
“Uh-huh. And what were your exact words when I suggested we should go suitcase shopping because you’ll need luggage after you win that writing residency in Colorado?”
Hadley’s face heated. Every time she thought about the application she’d sent in, she felt equal parts excited and nauseated. “I love that you believe in me, but I’m a longshot at best. Some of the applicants have probably published actual books, and I... Okay, I see your point. I guess we could both work on our confidence.”
Her sister nodded. “And you know what’s a good exercise for boosting self-confidence? When you ask a hot guy to your high-school reunion and he says yes.”
“Leanne! We covered this already. Now, if we’re done with the academics, I have some writing to do tonight.”
“You’re just saying that to get rid of me.”
“No, I’m saying it because it’s true. Getting rid of you is a bonus.”
“All right, I’m leaving. But when you become a rich and famous novelist, you have to take us on a fabulous spa weekend.”
“Deal.”
After locking the front door behind her sister and changing into a pair of yoga pants and her favorite Snoopy T-shirt, Hadley curled up on the couch with her laptop. As much as she loved her job at the library, this was her favorite time of day—when she got to play with words like they were clay, molding her own world and shaping fascinating characters.
Except, tonight, the characters weren’t cooperating.
The lanky inspector from Scotland Yard suddenly bore a striking resemblance to a rugged cowboy, and none of his dialogue came out right. After typing and deleting half a dozen attempts at the same sentence, she relented. For the moment, perhaps her time would be better spent on story research than the actual writing. She opened the search engine, preparing to fact-check the form of poison her villain used. But her fingers didn’t cooperate any better than her characters had. Instead of typing arsenic trioxide, she inexplicably typed Grayson Cox.
I am going to do story research. Really. Just as soon as she finished skimming a few articles about a certain rodeo champ.
* * *
GRAYSON WIPED A damp hand across his already damp jeans, noting that there seemed to be more water on him than on either of the two boys in the tub. But, silver lining, Sam and Tyler were both clean; Grayson had helped them wash their hair without anyone yelping about shampoo in his eyes and everyone seemed recovered from the earlier incident at the grocery store. He still wasn’t sure how they’d gone so quickly from a simple “Boys, no running” to total meltdown.
Yet, without the resulting meltdown, Hadley never would have poked her head around the corner to help.
Despite past irritations with her and the graceless way he’d